Colgin Sucks

i avoided introducing a pacifier since i didn't want any potential latching issues with nursing. in addition, i always liked the idea of less dependency on certain items and letting him figure out ways to self-soothe.

so what happens? now at 6 months, the boy cannot stop sucking his thumb. the only time he will remove the darn thumb is when we feed him or when he's smiling. every bite of food he takes, he finishes it off with his thumb (we call it his chaser). he also thinks his thumb is some conduit to everything. e.g. he reaches for our drinks and when he gets at least one hand on it, he sucks that same thumb as if it were a straw to the drink. he does that for anything he wants to put in his mouth. he grabs it and sucks the hand that has a hold on it.

come the introduction of the pacifier (finally). he liked it but didn't know how to keep it in his mouth for long. when i bought him a pacifier clip (so it would always be clipped near him), he would grab the pacifier and clumsily insert the HANDLE part in his mouth instead. yeah, he didn't look the brightest baby and we coudn't justify to every discerning eye that we introduced him to the pacifier late. but the more important point is - he preferred the thumb than the pacifier handle. in fact, after the whole pacifier ordeal, he has been sucking BOTH thumbs as if he were trying to make a point that i failed.

so colgin has always done this really adorable smile where he tucks his lips in. but we recently figured out his lips are tucked in because he's SUCKING them! no WONDER he actually removes his thumb when "smiling." i was so disappointed. i thought he was just an extra-happy baby...all those times i thought he was smiling at me, he was just trying to "self-soothe" with his own lips. :(

lesson learned? if you plan to keep pacifiers away from your newborn, make sure you introduce it to them as soon as they prove to have no latching issue...before they start a worse habit of thumb or lip sucking, which is much harder to wean (minus the use of tabasco). i'm seeing lots of $$ towards braces in the future for this sucker.